Facebook Is Testing the "Downvote" Button

It is not the “dislike” option that users are hoping for.

Facebook is now testing a “downvote” button that will let people hide comments they don’t like as well as give feedback about them. A small number of US users are now trying out the feature, and the social network confirmed the test to Tech Crunch.

“We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts,” the company reveals in a statement. “This is running for a small set of people in the US only.”

The social media platform, however, has denied that the new feature was a “dislike” button. When the downvote button is clicked, the selected comment becomes hidden. Aftwards, downvoters can then choose to flag a post as “offensive”, “misleading” or “off-topic.” However, the option will not affect the visibility of its post for other people nor will its rnaking be affected in the news feed.

Martin Garner, a tech analyst at CCS Insight, notes that Facebook does not want to be labelled a publisher. “It has become very clear that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want Facebook to have the responsibility of identifying what is offensive or misleading – and what is not – because that would put him into the position of being a publisher rather than a platform,” he said. “He doesn’t want to do that as it takes the business in a different direction – so he is leaning on the community to do it. It is an open question as to whether that’s the right answer or not but that’s where this fits in.”